Does anyone know of a good point by point comparison of the concept of "original sin?"

[RKO]

I admit that in exploring Orthodoxy, at my limited ability to deeply understand, the EO position sounds a lot more correct to me. I’m interested in finding, or hearing your discussion on why we inherit Adam’s guilt, and how that makes sense. I get that we inherit the consequences of Adam’s sin, but I’m not really believing that we inherit his “guilt” as well.

 

[Polycarp1]

I admit that in exploring Orthodoxy, at my limited ability to deeply understand, the EO position sounds a lot more correct to me. I’m interested in finding, or hearing your discussion on why we inherit Adam’s guilt, and how that makes sense. I get that we inherit the consequences of Adam’s sin, but I’m not really believing that we inherit his “guilt” as well.

I don’t think we inherited guilt for Adam’s sin at least not on an individual level but as a race we inherited the consequences as did all creation. Frank Sheed puts it well in his Theology for Beginners. In his “Map of Life” he explains:

Because Christ was God and Man, He was able to effect the reconciliation of God and man. The human race had broken the first relationship of oneness by sin: and of itself the human race with all its imperfections on it could make no offering to God in reparation for its sin. Literally the human race could not make reparation. Yet for the human act of rebellion, a human act of atonement was required: for the sin of human nature, only an act of human nature could satisfy–yet this act of human nature man could not perform. Christ was God and Man. The acts He performs in His human nature were truly human acts: yet because every action is of the person, they were acts of God, whose every act is of infinite value: Christ could make the necessary reparation. That particular action of His human nature which Christ chose as an offering-in-reparation–a sacrifice–was His death: at the age of thirty-three He was crucified upon Calvary.

This was the atonement. By it the breach between God and the human race was closed. The race was redeemed from that condition of separation from God into which the sin of Adam, the representative man, had plunged it. Heaven, the final and eternal union of God and man, was once more possible to man. For even the holiest man of the time between Adam’s fall and Christ’s death was still a member of the human race, a member of the race that had lost oneness with God, and as such debarred from heaven. But, by this re-making of the oneness, not only was Life–the Supernatural Life–set flowing with new richness for the elevation of man’s soul: but that Life could now in heaven receive the full and complete flowering which before Calvary was impossible to it.

Christ had come “to save His people from their sins”: He had come that man “might have life and have it more abundantly.” These two purposes are in reality the same purpose–the effect of sin is the destruction of the Supernatural Life: a soul in sin is a soul that lacks the Supernatural Life: sin is removed by the pouring into the soul of that life-as darkness is removed by the turning on of the light. So far, then, for the first part of Christ’s mission: He had reconciled the human race to God: He had brought back the rich store of Supernatural Life. SHEED ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/fsheed_incarnation_dec05.asp

 

[bzkoss236]

I admit that in exploring Orthodoxy, at my limited ability to deeply understand, the EO position sounds a lot more correct to me. I’m interested in finding, or hearing your discussion on why we inherit Adam’s guilt, and how that makes sense. I get that we inherit the consequences of Adam’s sin, but I’m not really believing that we inherit his “guilt” as well.

I don’t think we inherit the guilt either. I think when we Catholics refer to Original Sin, what we are really referring to is the lack of Sanctifying Grace at our birth, which is one of the consequences of the Fall. By our baptism, which is when we say that “Original Sin is ‘forgiven’”, what we are really saying is that Sanctifying Grace is restored and we are brought into the Body of Christ.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

I admit that in exploring Orthodoxy, at my limited ability to deeply understand, the EO position sounds a lot more correct to me. I’m interested in finding, or hearing your discussion on why we inherit Adam’s guilt, and how that makes sense. I get that we inherit the consequences of Adam’s sin, but I’m not really believing that we inherit his “guilt” as well.

A bit of advice here; While you explore Orthodoxy learn what Orthodoxy does and teaches. Please never ever believe what Orthodoxy teaches and contests about the Roman Catholic Church. They still can’t get the Roman Catholic teaching of filioque or infallibility correct.

If you want to learn what the Roman Catholic Church teaches on Original sin. Learn it first from the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t learn it from the Orthodox Church, Islam, or protestants they don’t have a clue from the whole context of scripture which supports Original sin.

On original sin see the CCC paragraph’s 379, 387,1440,1871-1872 don’t forget to look up all the scriptures that are listed with these paragraphs from the old to the new.

Peace be with you

 

[edwest2]

From Humani Generis:

“37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.[12]”

Source:
vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html

Peace,
Ed

 

[SteveVH]

Original sin is not something we acquire. It is, rather, something we have lost; i.e. life. We require Baptism in order to have our spiritual life restored, which was lost due to the sin of Adam.

*"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!"* (Romans 5:12-17)

 

[GaryTaylor]

You must understand the issue presented and respond accordingly. It does little good to respond to a charge you do not understand.

Guilt - Assigned to Augustine and confirmed by the scholastics…

“St. Augustine in combating Pelagianism obviously misread St. Paul. by relegating the power of Satan, death, and corruption to the background and pushing to the foreground of controversy the problem of personal guilt in the transmission of original sin, St. Augustine introduced a false moralistic philosophical approach which is foreign to the thinking of St. Paul, not accepted by the patristic tradition of the East.”

“This has certainly become a paradoxical attitude, especially since these Christians who cannot point their fingers at this enemy of mankind are the same people who illogically claim that in Christ there is remission of this unknown original sin.”

“It is also wrong to deal with the problem of the transmission of original sin within the framework of dualistic anthropology while at the same time completely ignoring the Hebraic foundations of St. Paul’s anthropology. Likewise, and attempt to interpret the Biblical doctrine of the fall in terms of a hedonistic philosophy of happiness is already doomed to failure because of its refusal to recognize not only the abnormality but, more important, the consequences of death and corruption.”

“This hedonistic type of approach to human destiny is, of course, possible only for those who accept death and corruption either as normal or, at most, as the outcome of a decision of God to punish. If those who accept God as the ultimate source of death were to really attribute sin to the powers of corruption, they would in effect be making God Himself the source of sin and evil.”

“The relationship of the Divine Will to human wills is not one of juridical or hedonistic submission of the one to the other (as St. Augustine and the scholastics thought), but rather one of personal love”

“To get at the basic presuppositions of Biblical thinking, one must abandon any juridical scheme of human justice which demands punishment and rewards according to objective rules of morality. To approach the problem of original sin in such a naive manner as to say that tout lecteur sense concilura qu’une penalite commune implique une offense commune, and that thus all share in the guilt of Adam, 66 ] is to ignore the true nature of the justice of God and deny and real power to the devil.”

romanity.org/htm/rom.10.en.original_sin_according_to_st._paul.01.htm

And so on as the article reads.